Bird_Gunner45 said:
Drinking and driving is against the law, so if there is a way to better enforce the law, why wouldn't we, as a society, want that?
Driver education, defensive driving courses, licencing improvements, suspensions, increased insurance rates for bad drivers, police ticketing and fines, distracted driving laws, MADD, breathalysers, ignition interlock, seatbelts and seatbelt enforcement, air bags, laminated and tempered glass, crumple zones, side impact protection beams, collapsible steering columns and padded dashboards. Convertibles without roll-over bars are less common now. Less blowouts thanks to improved tires. Car fires are also much less common, thanks to improved fuel system integrity and fire retardant materials.
Improved highway construction.
I remember having to sit through the old Highway Safety films with titles like, "Mechanised Death", "Signal 30", "Red Asphalt" and "Highways of Agony" etc.
They put a waste paper basket in the aisle for those who had to puke.
Paramedic services at accident ( and shooting ) scenes have improved greatly.
In 1960 President John F. Kennedy declared that "Traffic accidents constitute one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, of the nation's public health problems".
Then in 1966 Lyndon B. Johnson and President's Commission on Highway Safety/National Academy of Sciences declared the carnage "the neglected disease of modern society."
The report revealed that in 1965 alone, vehicle accidents killed more Americans than were lost in the Korean War.
Soon after, the National Highway Traffic Safety Act was adopted which standardized EMS training, promoted state involvement, encouraged community oversight, recommended radio communication, and stressed a single emergency number.
In Toronto, most traffic fatalities are pedestrians.
"Last year in Toronto, there was the lowest number of traffic fatalities in 50 years."
Police Chief Bill Blair
Star Jan 21 2010.
Metro Police don't do it anymore, but I remember they used to fly black flags on those high radio whip aerials they had on their yellow cars. What was even more startling were the announcements made on CHUM radio. They were unbelievably somber and macabre, accompanied by a drum roll and grim music, announcing that, "The Black Flag is Flying! This is not a tribute to the dead, but a warning to the living"!!
The amazingly grisly and macabre announcements of the latest traffic fatalities in Metro Toronto.
There was also Elmer the Safety elephant.
Always room for improvement. We could return to the days of getting around on the backs of animals. < joking.
The public refused to tolerate the carnage and demanded their public safety officials do something about it.
More than just thoughts and prayers.
My point is that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson treated it as a "public health problem" and a "disease".
Perhaps, or perhaps not, Americans will one day come to feel the same way about this topic?